


Wrap Your Wings Around Me

by FyrMaiden



Series: With Hairspray and Denim [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:17:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2148714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Blaine and Tina hook up.</p>
<p>(As fair warning, the catalyst for their tryst is Finn's death and how grief affects emotions and needs. This is a story about grief, not about sex.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrap Your Wings Around Me

**Author's Note:**

> Fic is posted as part of the 'with hairspray and denim' Blaine +girls series, but it's actually born out of the 'Spin The Bottle' verse, the other two parts of which are [here](http://archiveofourown.org/series/72928).

Blaine and Tina have sex precisely one time. It’s sad and awkward and born of grief and a need for human connection. It doesn’t make either of them feel better. Neither of them really expected that it would.

*

It’s actually a nice morning on the day they get the news that Finn has died. It seems like it should be raining. There should be clouds. The sky should be as heavy as the news that lights up their phones and overshadows their day, but it isn’t. It’s nice out. It’s ordinary. That just makes it worse.

Kurt comes home. Blaine sees him before the funeral, talks to him. They sit opposite one another at the Lima Bean, Kurt’s knee pressed to the inside of Blaine’s as he rearranges napkins and sugar packets, exactly the same way he did when his dad was ill. It’s not like it was in February, though. It’s not like it was in March. Blaine wants to reach across the table and take Kurt’s hands in his, but he doesn’t think his touch is wanted. Everything about Kurt seems distant, from the cadence of his voice to the way his eyes shift away from Blaine’s. Finn is dead, and Kurt is a ghost.

In the days immediately surrounding their personal tragedy, Blaine watches as Kurt and Carole drift into one another. They have a bond now, immutable and vast. They have both lost the irreplaceable. Kurt is a decade past losing his mother and the pain is duller but no less real. Carole’s grief is still at the surface, coated by only the flimsiest veneer of acceptance. In the same way that she is a pale substitute for the mother he has told Blaine repeatedly that he barely remembers beyond the idea of smells and the imprint of sounds and the soft soft dreams of nighttime lullabies, so he becomes the vessel into which her excess is poured. All of her dead dreams are transposed into a need to see Kurt live and succeed. Blaine thinks about the ring he bought only short weeks before, before Mr Schue married Miss Pillsbury, before everything changed. He thinks about the ring and wishes he’d asked Kurt when he meant to, because now it feels too late.

Later, nothing resolved and nothing changed, Kurt goes back to New York. He sends Blaine a text at a little past midnight. “Just got home,” it says. “I forgot to say thank you.” Blaine stares at it in the darkness, and falls asleep before he puzzles out his reply.

*

Life marches on. The dates change, the days give way slowly to one another. Grief carpets each one of them, changing minutes into hours. It invades their sanctuaries and their spaces, and becomes a dusty shroud that no one wants to be the first to peal back. No one wants to be the first to seem heartless, to say that they’re young, that they can’t live in the darkness forever.

Tina wears black like it’s her armour. She straightens her hair, and wears fingerless black lace gloves. One day she wears a fascinator with black feathers in it, and a veil that covers her eyes. For Tina, sadness gives way to burning resentment, and resentment festers into anger. She is angry that Finn is dead, yes, but largely she’s angry at being asked to put her life on hold. She wants to remember him and move on. She doesn’t want to be stuck in a limbo of almost living for a day longer. She’s tried talking to Miss Pil- Mrs Schuester about it, and been handed a vaguely facetious pamphlet explaining that this isn’t about her for her trouble. She knows that. And so every morning she puts on her armour and marches back into battle, and she doesn’t say a word.

Blaine, on the other hand, doesn’t wear black, or he wears only accents of black. For Blaine, grief is crushing without someone to talk to. For Blaine, grief is immediate. It’s considering everyone he loves the most, and how much it would hurt to lose them. Grief emanates from Blaine. It silences him. Grief steals his ability to talk, to express himself. Grief cracks him open. It spreads him wide and exposes his softness. In his grief, Blaine needs people. He needs to touch and ground himself in the reality of the people that are left.

In the weeks immediately following Finn’s death, Tina and Blaine find their comfort in one another. They provide a space for the other to speak and be heard without reprisal or judgement. Outwardly, Tina becomes Blaine’s voice and Blaine Tina’s heart.

*

Tina asks when it’s okay to stop feeling sad, when it’s okay to start thinking about living again. Tina says she worked hard to not be this person. She doesn’t want to move backwards. She doesn’t want to be stuck in the past anymore. She wants it to be okay to wear primary colours again. “It doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten him,” she says. “But we can’t exist in limbo.”

They’re sitting in Blaine’s bedroom, him on his bed and Tina slumped in his chair, her bag at her feet and the strap still in her hand as her arms drape haphazard over the sides. Only her knees turn in as her dress rides in inches up her thighs. Blaine in turn has slipped his arms out of his suspenders and leaves them to hang down by his hips. His bowtie is undone at his throat, and he feels dishevelled, out of time and place, in a way that he has since October but which is also new and different. Everything is different now. The course of his life is different. Someone has died. He doesn’t have an answer for her, but he wishes that he did. “I think,” he says, cautiously, still unsure of the order of his thoughts, “That you have to decide that for yourself.” Tina sighs and shifts in the chair, lifts her hips to pull the skirt of her dress back down, and laughs when Blaine blushes and turns his face away. He’s smiling too when he looks back at her, and she leans down to open up her bag, re-emerges with her iPod and a triumphant grin.

“I found this band,” she says enthusiastically. “I think you’d like them.”

Just like that, they’re dancing barefoot in Blaine’s bedroom to The 1975.

*

The house is still and quiet when the music stops. They both collapse backwards onto Blaine’s bed with a sigh. Tina’s dress rides up her thighs again, and Blaine reaches between them for her hand, curls his fingers into hers and lets her grip him back. The air in the room feels different, full of static and unspoken things that don’t have names. He can feel her hair against his skin, every strand a tiny electric brand that fizzes and pops with life. The bed shifts a little as she rolls slowly to face him, and he turns his head to find her gazing at him with implacable sadness. He lets go of her hand and rolls to face her too, remembers the first time he was here with someone else and what came next. He doesn’t know what to expect of this moment that hangs endless between them until Tina shifts closer to him and presses her lips to his. Kissing her back is as natural as breathing. It’s real and it’s human, and that’s important. Connecting is important. He moves his hand slowly to cup her face, to brush her hair back behind her ear.

“I don’t-” he whispers, and she shakes her head, strokes his skin and traces the shape of his eyebrows.

“I know,” she says, and turns the corners of her mouth up in a sad smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. She kisses him again with more intent, more purpose, and Blaine lets himself go with it, lets his hand trace the shape of her face and slide down her body to skim the swell of her breast through the fabric of her dress and bra, over the curve of her hip to the hem of her dress. He kisses her and lets his hand feel the smoothness of her leg and the warmth of her skin, and gasps softly against her mouth when her hand shifts between them to press against him. He feels the warm familiar pulse of blood and then he feels her smile against his mouth as his eyes slam resolutely closed.

“Blaine?” she breathes, shifting her hand, feeling the shape of him, and he leaves the smooth skin of her thigh to tangle his hand back in her hair, nods his head and opens his eyes. He kisses her jaw and allows her to roll him onto his back. “We don’t have to,” she says, her face hovering above his, her hair a cascade, a curtain blocking out the world. He knows that, but he also knows that he’s sad and lonely and that she is, too, and somewhere, something inside of him just needs to feel loved and alive. He doesn’t speak, isn’t sure he can, really, only removes his fingers from her hair to fumble with his belt, with his button and zipper. Tina slides her panties down her thighs and doesn’t even bother to remove her socks as she helps him with his pants.

It’s quick and desperate and a little bit sad. Blaine indicates to Tina that condoms are in the draw beneath his Kurt shrine, which makes Tina smile and arch a coy eyebrow and Blaine huffs a laugh that frees something in his chest, tells her to shut up. They don’t undress more than they are, even. Tina rolls the condom on, teases with hands smaller than he’s used to until he’s breathless and ready, and then hikes her dress far enough up her thighs to be able to straddle his hips. It’s different and overwhelming, being inside of her, but he can’t think about it, can’t focus on the why. It’s easy to get lost in the heat of her as she rides out their connection, though, her own hands on her breasts and throat and in her hair, his on her thighs and her hips and her ass. Blaine chokes a cry as he comes, his fingers gripping at her skin, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she grinds down against him, chasing and finding climax before she collapses against him, her body rocking through its aftershock, her face buried against his throat as he runs useless hands up and down her spine.

When she rolls off of him, he feels the loneliness closing in around him again. The world is still vast and different outside of the two of them, and he knows that Tina feels it as well. Her smile flickers, small and sad, as she stands and passes his underwear to him and gathers hers from the floor. “I’m going to use the bathroom,” she says, and Blaine only nods. In the quiet, he swipes at his eyes and huffs a bitter sigh at his ceiling, but still uses the lull to dispose of the condom and change from his shirts into soft, worn pyjamas. Neither of them speaks, really, when she returns, nor as they straighten his bed and pillows. It’s not until she’s gathered her iPod and slipped it back into her bag that she breaks the tension and pulls him against her in a hug.

“So this’ll be something to tell your kids,” she says, and he groans into her hair and pulls away from her.

“Everyone knows parents don’t have sex, Tina,” he says, and tries not to think about his mom and dad because that way lies therapy, or more therapy.

“I don’t know,” she muses, pulling her bag across her chest and burrowing for her car keys. “I bet your dad-”

Blaine screws up his nose and covers his face, but he’s laughing again at least. They’ll be okay, he’s sure of that.

*

Tina’s dress the next day has blocks of green in it. Her socks are black and over her knees, but her hair is curled in flicks around her face. She sits next to Blaine in Glee and rests her hand on his arm. “Are we still okay?” she asks, softly, and he frowns and nods and tries to meet her eyes, except his gaze slides down to her chin and chest, and he feels his ears go pink. Inside, he feels oddly flat and disconcerted by his own body, but it’s not because of them.

“Yeah,” he says, “Yeah. We’re okay.”

Tina’s smile is bright and honest, and Blaine feels it opening up his a little as well.

*

Blaine is only dimly aware of one thing when he gets home from school and Glee. He knows that he wants a hug from his mom. He wants to hear her voice and to let her make him feel like everything will once again be alright, that someday things will feel normal again. He heads for the den, where he can hear the muted sound of the TV and where his mom is sitting in the corner of their couch, their dog is lying next to her. They both look up when he comes in, and the dog gets down with a gentle shove from his mom’s hand. “Sit,” she says, and he crumples into himself a little, curling into her side as she wraps her arm around him and runs her hand over his hair.

“Shh,” she says, warm and calm against him, her voice soft in his ears. “This too shall pass.” Her perfume smells like amber on her skin. He thinks, these will be the things he remembers when she’s gone, the lilt of her voice and the smell of amber, her hands strong and comforting against his body.

He thinks, that’s exactly what he gets from Tina, what he got from Tina, upstairs, alone. Strength and comfort, and the immediacy of connection. He doesn’t feel bad about it. He wishes he knew how to feel at all. His phone buzzes in his hand and he turns it over to see a message from Kurt. “Go,” his mom says softly, and he flicks her a brittle smile. “It’s okay to be okay,” she says as he retreats, and he feels that one in his bones.

He texts Kurt back as he waits for the coffee machine to warm up. “Need to talk to you,” he types, “Slept with Tina.”

Kurt doesn’t respond for the length of time it takes the machine to make coffee. When he does, he says, “You’re not obliged to tell me.” Blaine feels his heart soar.

“I know. I needed to though. Thank you.”

Kurt’s still talking to him. He trips back up the stairs lighter than he has been in weeks. He calls Kurt from his bedroom, and Kurt answers. “I love you,” he says, breathless and sure, and Kurt hums his assent.

“I love you too,” he says, and then, “So tell me about Tina.”

Blaine huffs and smiles and puts his hand over his eyes, and relaxes back into his pillow. Nothing is okay, but everything is fine.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [(On how sex is a natural response to death. Just in case you need it.)](http://thegrievingatheist.com/2013/05/28/sex-and-grief/)


End file.
